Monte Carlo comparison of mid-size telescope designs for the Cherenkov Telescope Array

TL;DR

This study uses Monte Carlo simulations to compare different medium-size telescope designs for the Cherenkov Telescope Array, aiming to optimize array sensitivity and angular resolution in high-energy gamma-ray observations.

Contribution

It provides a systematic comparison of Davis-Cotton and Schwarzschild-Couder telescope designs, highlighting how design parameters affect array performance.

Findings

Schwarzschild-Couder design improves angular resolution.

Design parameters significantly influence sensitivity.

Optimal telescope configurations enhance gamma-ray detection.

Abstract

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a future very high energy gamma-ray observatory. CTA will be comprised of small-, medium- and large-size telescopes covering an energy range from tens of GeV to hundreds of TeV and will surpass existing telescopes in sensitivity by an order of magnitude. The aim of our study is to find the optimal design for the medium-size telescopes (MSTs), which will determine the sensitivity in the key energy range between a few hundred GeV to about ten TeV. To study the effect of the telescope design parameters on the array performance, we simulated arrays of 61 MSTs with 120 m spacing and a variety of telescope configurations. We investigated the influence of the primary telescope characteristics including optical resolution, pixel size, and light collection area on the total array performance with a particular emphasis on telescope configurations with imaging performance similar to the proposed Davis-Cotton (DC) and Schwarzschild-Couder (SC) MST designs. We compare the performance of these telescope designs, especially the achieved gamma-ray angular resolution and differential point-source sensitivity.